


Eden, Laced in Gray

by Pent



Category: Starfighter (Comic)
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe, Blood, Constructed Reality, Gen, Harm to Children, Head Injury, M/M, Memories, Morbid, Self-Harm, Trippy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-09
Updated: 2013-03-09
Packaged: 2017-11-20 17:06:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/587734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pent/pseuds/Pent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The dreamlike haven twisted rioting perceptions from the gray expanse on the other side, and the brooding black fence encasing it trapped prey in its sticky embrace. When the supposedly-invulnerable wall is penetrated, the world is splattered with dye. </p>
<p>Deimos-centric AU spin on colonists.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Outside

Thinking that he had caught a glimpse of snow, Deimos's face fell as he tentatively peered outside through the tiled squares of glass at the bleak, gray sky. Deimos squeezed himself further into the corner between the booth and the wall, reminding himself that he was safe. Others barely looked his way when he blended into the very back of the diner, which he preferred over ticking disasters when people tried to get to know him. Deimos's ratty, gloved hands nursed a cold mug of coffee and his nose was lightly pressed against the chilled window as he surveyed the town outside.

He kept a distrustful eye on the black barred fence across the alley-street with monstrous, spiky tops shaped like tridents. Deimos looked for signs that the connected gate had recently been opened; for tracks in the patches of melting snow on the quaked brick road beneath it.

Sometimes, he dared to cast his gaze upon the mansion encased within the towering fence. Guilt growled in his face for marveling at it with his filthy eyes, as if he would rid the place of it's radiating warmth and security. Deimos felt safer watching the mansion from behind the layer of thick glass from the diner across the street, but still recoiled slightly when he brought his attention to the flickering, gentle light coming from one of the higher rooms.

Identifying the illuminated room as the study, Deimos trembled when a slim figure came into view as he paced by the window. He pressed his nose up against the glass of the dirty diner window again, slicing his vision through the grime to see if he could tell who the person was from so far away. The man in the study was not who he was searching for, but Deimos recognized him. Young, handsome, blonde, and undeniably rich—one of the normal inhabitants of the mansion.

People who lived in patches of heaven like that did not look like Deimos. Their skin was not tattered and rough, and their hair was neither filthy nor dark. They were pristine and pretty, and always seemed to have smiles on their faces. Deimos was embroidered with a solemn frown. Hope and fortune sparkled in their bright eyes, while Deimos's stayed dark and empty. He had been young when he learned not to waste his time longing for unattainable realities, to give in rather than to squirm in unsettledness. However, he could not help but dream whenever his sorrowful eyes looked up and saw that mansion beyond the black prison-barred fence. People like them lived their lives without ever having to so much as look at people like him. That was just the way things were.

Without Deimos thinking too deeply about it, his life flew by undisrupted—until he saw someone like him inside the mansion. _Inside_ the black fence.

Deimos remembered struggling to convince himself that what he saw was not real; that he was hallucinating from starvation or dreaming, starting to see things from all the time spent staring up at that mansion; but there was no doubt about it. There was someone like him in the mansion. Not realizing that he had been holding his breath, Deimos let out a small exhalation and sipped at his cold coffee like a bird.

It was autumn, he remembered clearly. Deimos had been watching leaves fall from the trees contained within the dream-fence, which were unnaturally aligned in straight rows to create a powerful path towards the mansion's great doors. The leaves burned brilliant shades of yellow to red and there were no dead, soggy, crunchy leaves to tromp on like there were in the gray beyond the barred perimeter. The grass beneath those trees was vivacious and green, he recalled. Although not concealed in his usual spot by the window, Deimos had still been in the diner across the street from the mansion; timid, as he had nothing with him and had to be prepared to bolt out of the door. His eyes stung and he longed to be in the courtyard, wanting to run his hands through the soft grass and feel the warmth and security of the dream. 

Distantly, he stared, hardly noticing when someone had stormed out of the mansion's front doors. When Deimos noticed him trailing into the yard, he jolted with alarm, feeling his heart lurch in a combination of terror, confusion, and joy. The man had jet-black hair, spiked with blue. Deimos bit his lip so hard that he drew blood, staring at him with wide, unblinking eyes as if he would disappear if he looked away for even a second.

The dark-haired man was furious, in an argument with someone yelling at him from the door—someone who belonged there; blonde and pretty. Deimos was flabbergasted to witness what appeared to be the dark-haired man yelling right back at him. Springing up from his seat, Deimos scrambled out of the diner and sprinted across the street towards the gates, nearly getting hit by a car that came to a screeching halt as he weaved around it. 

Unfortunately, when he crashed into the gates and stopped his momentum by clinging onto the fence with an iron grip, their quarrel had ended. The mansion door slammed shut, and the dark-haired man had stormed off. Deimos desperately bolted around the perimeter trying to find him until he had to let himself collapse to catch his dangerously heavy breaths. The dark-haired man was nowhere to be found. He remembered curling into a ball on the ground, hugging his knees to his chest with the cold black fence pressing against his back.

Eyes swimming with pain, Deimos softly blew into his coffee cup on the table, hanging his head down to watch tiny black ripples dance across the liquid surface. He rubbed his eyes and looked out the window again. The light in the study was still on, and a thin layer of snow now trickled from the sky. Deimos pressed his face into the window again after he had warmed up, distantly staring at the study with glazed, unseeing eyes.

A taxi drove by dangerously close to the edge of the street near the diner, splashing filthy mush onto the tiled window. Deimos jumped and then looked to his lap in pitiful devastation. The view from the window was now too distorted for him to see anything at all. Sliding out from the booth, Deimos slugged his programmed path out of the diner and across the street with sunken shoulders, hoping that he would see the dark-haired man that day. A thought tore through him, reminding him to make things easier for himself by giving up; he would never see that man again or go inside those gates. Something drove him to keep coming back every day to look for him; and each day he grew more and more weary, feeling nothing but crushing defeat.

"Hey!" someone bellowed. Deimos tore his dead eyes away from the security of the mansion when he realized that he was being yelled at, unsure of how long he had been tuning him out. "Get the hell away from here! How many times do I gotta tell you to fucking scram?"

Instinctively, he wanted to run, but his body would not budge. Deimos was too dazed to loosen his death grip on the fence, as if it would save him by teleporting him to the other side, or that the dark-haired man would come running out of the mansion to save him. "Stay the fuck away from here!" the man roared. 

Reality hit Deimos, but not as hard as the rock that slammed into the back of his head. The sickening sound of his skull cracking pulsed over and over again in his numb ears, rattling every bone in his body. Deimos ripped his fists from the metal gate, stumbling and running as fast as he could, using the fence that now rippled and warped like raindrops falling into puddles to guide him. He tried not to step where the black spots appeared in his vision, afraid that he would trip over something and fall. Too disoriented to see if he was being chased, he felt the back of his head with the two fingers exposed from the holes in his glove and realized that he was gushing with blood.

Deimos was completely indifferent to the idea that he might bleed to death on the streets, but still ran. The black spots covered almost all of Deimos's dizzy vision when he crashed into the ground, feeling his face scrape and prick with stinging heat. Before falling unconscious, he wrapped his fingers around the freezing bottom of one of the black bars of the dream-fence.


	2. Inside

Stretched out the wrong way on a remote leather loveseat near the back of the dark third floor guest room, Cain let out a small sigh. He closed his eyes and breathed cigarette smoke into the air, creating a phantasmal puff that dissolved into the darkness. It was rare for him to be alone in the quiet, listening to nothing but the muffled rhythmic ticking of the grandfather clock housed on the second floor. Tranquil moments like these were normally shattered by his presence, but every once in awhile, Cain managed to slip away unnoticed. He tried to relax, well aware that his time shrouded in silence would be brief.  
  
"Cain!" someone hissed, stopping dead in his tracks after nearly passing the open entrance to the guest room. He lazily opened his eyes to see Abel marching towards him, face threatening to spill with boiling anger and surprise, as if Cain had been caught murdering someone. They locked into a glaring match.  
  
"Do you want my father to kill you?" Abel asked, attempting to snatch the cigarette dangling loosely between Cain's fingers. Cain quickly swiped his hand away, and rewarded himself by taking an obnoxiously long drag. He blew smoke into Abel's face, making him cough.  
  
"Relax, princess," he said, tapping out ashes onto the carpeted floor as a smug smile spread across his face. "He smokes in here all the time."  
  
"Not in _here_."  
  
Closing his eyes again in attempts to resurrect the quiet moment, Cain retorted, "No one's gonna come up here. What difference does it make?"  
  
Abel sighed, unable to argue with Cain's stubbornness. "Can you please go outside this time?" he asked. Cain cracked his eyes open and noticed the weary darkness growing from under Abel's eyes when he sat on the very edge of the loveseat, nudging Cain's propped-up legs aside. "Please? You know that they're strung up about the guests arriving later this week and need the place to be—"  
  
"—Late," he muttered, cigarette bouncing in his mouth as he spoke. The trail of smoke arose in a zigzag pattern that Cain watched until it disappeared.  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"It's late. In the dead of winter."  
  
"You'll be fine."  
  
"I'll freeze to death."  
  
"You'll be—"  
  
"What will you do when I'm dead from frostbite?"  
  
" — _Cain_ ," Abel deplored.  
  
He shot the blonde a nasty look before he sat up in the chair and stretched. "Alright, alright. Calm down, princess; didn't know it was that time of the month." Cain wandered out of the guest room with Abel trailing behind him all the way to the front door in the main hall, their shoes tapping and echoing against the smooth floors as they walked.  
  
" _Vualya_." Cain swung both doors open to make a point, causing a gust of chilly air to blow into the mansion. He gaudily snapped, "It's all your fault if I freeze and never come back."  
  
Abel made a small noise before he closed both doors. Cain paced into the yard and crushed his cigarette into the crisp, winter grass while he lit up another one. He shivered and observed the dying trees that looked hauntingly ominous, even from the windows inside. Cain constantly pestered Abel about how bleak and barren the yard was, and frowned at the sight of it. It looked especially droll and pitiful during winter, but was an embarrassingly shabby display regardless of the season.  
  
Sighing a hot breath into the air, Cain observed the distant street, but his eyes were drawn to the black fence enclosing the yard; that god-awful, hideous black fence. Flashbacks of the countless times he had pestered Abel to replace the fence—to have it completely stripped and rebuilt from the ground up—popped into his mind. It was horrendous in it's current state, too archaic for Cain's tastes. The black of the metal too sharply contrasted the white snow forming in tiny spots on the ground, making it stand out even more.  
  
Cain's attention was caught by a small spot of red in the snow by the fence, he crunched through the grass to see what it was, ready to be angry if people were beginning to treat the disgusting yard like a dumpster. Upon noticing that the spot of red was blood, Cain's stomach sank in alarm as he rushed over to inspect the damage. He jumped at the sight of the small body on the other side of the fence.  
  
"Holy— _fuck_ ," he cried, dropping his burning cigarette to the ground. Without thinking, Cain reacted by wildly tearing through the yard to get back to the mansion. He ripped the door to the mansion open, pushing the thought of disturbing Abel's parents to the bottom of his list of concerns. "Abel! Where the fuck are you—give me the fucking gate keys— _right now_ , Abel!"  
  
There was no immediate audible response from inside the quiet mansion, causing Cain to bellow, "Abel—I'm not fucking with you—give me your _fucking keys!_ "  
  
Sprinting down the master staircase with rogue-like silence, Abel looked half-pissed and double-alarmed, eyes wide in confusion and worry. "What—"  
  
Cain violently snatched the keys from Abel's limp hand and bolted outside, making a frantic beeline for the gate. Abel trotted after him but stopped a short distance from the door. He watched Cain, thinking that he had completely lost his mind. When Cain clearly was not coming back to the house and looked ready to sprint down the street, Abel jogged after him, demanding, "What the hell is going on?"  
  
"Fucking—corpse on your—lawn," he breathed, cursing up a storm as he straddled with the gate, trying to unlock it. Abel stood in sheer confusion, not knowing how to react to Cain's madness. Paling, he began to ask Cain to clarify, but Cain burst through the gate, sprinting down the perimeter of the fence. Abel followed him from inside the yard.  
  
When Abel noticed the spot of blood in his grass, he turned completely white and ran over to where Cain was obviously sprinting to. "Oh my god," was all Abel could mouth as he looked down at what appeared to be someone bashed into his fence and murdered.  
  
Cain froze when he twitched to pick up the body, comprehending what he was about to do. His face twisted in mild disgust before he poked the man with his shoe. "Cain, pick it—him up!" Abel cried, wondering how long ago this had happened and why nobody had done anything. A nervous thought came to his mind that someone had reported him as the culprit, since the man was killed so close to his property. Abel brought a nervous hand to his mouth when Cain finally picked up the limp figure.  
  
"Fuck!" he exclaimed, nearly dropping the limp man on his head while sharply shaking his hand to the ground, sending specks of blood flying through the air. Appalled, he wiped the blood on the man's nasty coat, grimly assuming that he would not need it anymore. Cain began to run back towards the gate, carrying the body awkwardly to avoid getting blood on his hands again. Abel hurried over to the gate after Cain darted through it and locked it. He hurried in after him, staring down at the ground to scuff any stray drops of blood with his shoe.  
  
"Shit, Abel; where do I put it?" Cain hissed quietly, looking ready to drop the man on the floor if he had to hold him for a second longer.  
  
Trying not to panic, Abel remained silent while he darted towards the door that led to the wine cellar. He felt a twinge of relief as he swung it open. Cain rushed down the stairs with the body, and Abel trailed back to the front doors to make sure that there were no signs of blood on the mansion's floors.  
  
When Abel finally rushed down the stairs and into the wine cellar, cautiously making sure to close the door behind him, he found that Cain had already set the body on the ground. He stared down at it, in a trance. "Did you double check?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"His pulse."  
  
"Didn't check it in the first pl—"  
  
" _Cain!_ " Abel sunk to the ground with tremendous relief and pressed his fingers to the man's neck, a bit agitated when he found that he was not actually a corpse, as Cain had implied, but had a slow, steady pulse. The man looked terrible, but at least he was alive.  
  
Cain huffed. "He's dead, princess; his eyes are open and it's creeping me the fuck out."  
  
Raising his brow, Abel avoided commenting on Cain's ignorance, stating, "No, he's definitely alive. We should get him to a hospital. His head is bleeding."  
  
"Hospital?" Cain scoffed, ignoring his fault, but cheeks prick red in unnoticeable embarrassment. "How the hell are you s'posed to explain how some poor, shabby nobody wound up practically dead on your property, and we just so happened to find him like that. Great story, princess—it'll do wonders for your family's reputation."  
  
Abel's eyes narrowed and fell. He knew that Cain was right, and tried to think of another option. Cain studied the man's face, getting a good look at him for the first time. He darkly commented, "They wouldn't treat him, anyway."  
  
"We can't just leave him here to bleed out," Abel said sharply after the slight hesitation in their conversation. Cain grunted in agreement, looking around the room hopelessly for anything that might spawn an idea of what to do. "Let's at least try to—"  
  
"Abel!" a sharp voice called from upstairs.  
  
Wincing, Abel shot up and inspected himself for spots of blood and cleared his throat, trying to compose himself. "Make sure he doesn't die," he pleaded in a strong whisper before freezing in thought, grabbing a wine bottle off one of the racks, and running up the stairs.  
  
"Dad?" Abel responded, slowing down significantly as he exited the wine cellar and closed the door behind him. He offered his father the bottle of wine and hoped that he did not look as terrible as he felt.  
  
His father took it, narrowed his eyes, and inquired, "What was all that fuss about earlier?"  
  
"Cain needed my keys," Abel said, realizing how tense he was. He wondered how suspicious he would look if he loosened his tight shoulders. The clenched jaw and blank look on his father's face told Able that he was tacking him down, looking for any sort of indication that he was lying. Abel held his uncomfortable posture. "He got locked out when he went outside to smoke."  
  
Looking far from thrilled, Abel's father said nothing for what seemed like forever and stared at his son. Abel stayed frozen like a statue, feeling as if his father's calculating gaze would shatter him. Finally, he threatened, "Tell him that next time I hear him hollering like that, I'm going to shoot him."  
  
It wasn't an empty threat. Abel nodded, casting his eyes towards the ground.


	3. [undefined]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Self-harm, abuse, & morbid imagery.

####  **No. 80**  
[RED_17]  


* * *

Secure inside Deimos's jacket pocket was a broken toothpick.

He did not remember exactly where he had found it, or what had possessed him to pick it up. Every time he contemplated getting rid of it, a bad feeling crept up from his toes and stabbed him in the chest; he froze the multiple times he had tried to toss the tiny object out of the hole in the broken bedroom window for it to be sucked into the chilly black abyss outside. Deimos followed his instincts and kept the half-toothpick tucked inside his pocket at all times, occasionally running the pads of his fingers over the splintered wood, even though it tore through his skin.

It was his treasure, he realized. A key to something that he had not yet discovered.

Nearly wheezing, Deimos tried to silence himself as he squeezed his eyes shut. Willing himself to become deathly silent was a skill he had been forced to acquire to stay alive. Pairs of legs stormed cluelessly around the room. Deimos was only able to see their shins from his tight position in the corner, squeezed under a caved-in bed. When they cursed and began to spread outside of the door to start looking for him in other rooms, Deimos loosened his shoulders and unlatched his firm grip around himself. He knew better than to crawl out from under the bed and kept his tired eyes glued on the part of the entryway he could see.

A few minutes passed before Deimos dared to twitch a muscle. He unraveled himself from his tight fetal position and rolled onto his belly, careful as to not bump his head on the bedframe. Mothballs floated through the air around his face. The room was empty now, but Deimos heard the boys making too much noise in other rooms in pursuit of him. Deimos was not afraid. He knew that the older boys were too big to penetrate the cramped forcefield under the bed. When they bribed smaller boys to fish Deimos out, he would lash out at them with a firm smack. Often, they ended up crying and well aware that they were not to infiltrate Deimos's territory. It was relatively safe under the half-broken bed with its metal frame bolted into the floor. Still, he peered venomously at the room beyond his safe-haven, keeping an eye on the chipped wooden door the boys had sloppily left open.

Out of the corner of his eye, something peculiar caught Deimos's attention—a tiny hole in the wall under the bed. After taking one last cautious glance at the door, Deimos shifted into a position that allowed him to better observe it. The inside of the hole looked red, while the outer walls were blanketed in a decaying floral wallpaper. He popped his thumb out of his mouth and tried to shove his pinky finger into the in the hole, but it was too small. Before he began to dig at it with his broken fingernails, Deimos tapped around the hole with a boney knuckle to see if anything would happen.

A thought hit Deimos. Squirming around uncomfortably in the cramped area, he jammed his hand into his pocket and pulled out his half-toothpick. He held it by the broken end, and carefully shoved it into the hole. The toothpick fit snugly, causing Deimos's heart to flutter and stomach to clench. Deimos had finally found the treasure that matched his key.

No longer paying attention to the room’s open door, Deimos crammed the toothpick further into the hole. It did not go far before the pressure of the wall stopped it. Deimos gingerly jiggled the splintered end to see if he could jam it further into the hole. Doing so caused the it to widen from the outside, exposing more red and giving him more room to wiggle the toothpick around. Without hesitation, Deimos began to hack at the wall, driving the toothpick into the hole as hard as he could.

The wall eventually began to crumble, causing tiny puffs of red dust to fall out of the hole. Abandoning the toothpick jammed in the wall, Deimos let out a silent gasp as he shot his hands down to catch some of the falling red dust before it hit the filthy floor. It felt strange, like something he was not supposed to see or touch—the wall’s secret horrors contained under thin protective layer that he had destroyed. The same bad feeling he had experienced before crawled through his body as the wall wept red tears.

Panicking, Deimos ripped the toothpick from the wall. He did not want to watch the dust sprinkle to the floor any longer, but could not tear his glossy eyes away from the sight. 

A single thought pierced Deimos’s mind: he needed to plug the hole in the wall, and he needed to do it _fast_. The toothpick was too sharp for the injured wall and would only make it bleed more rapidly. Biting his lip, Deimos pressed his finger to the hole in attempts to keep it from spreading red dust while he thought over his options. His finger sank into the loose wall, creating a tiny crater around the bloody hole. Deimos was terrified.

Scrambling out from underneath the bed backwards, Deimos cringed when he was no longer under the safe canopy of the bed, which was turning into a bloody mess from the broken wall. Thinking on sheer instinct, he jammed the splintered end of the toothpick into his exposed arm. It easily punctured his delicate skin, much easier than it had cracked the wall. Deimos tore the toothpick all the way up his arm to the inside of his elbow and watched as blood began to seep out of the wound line like a dam set free.

He sat still on the floor and tried to calm his chest, which was rising and falling too rapidly. Deimos made the mistake of tearing his eyes from the soothingness of his crimson blood to the soggy, cracked floral wallpaper. Many strips of the wallpaper peeled upwards in shreds like skinned flesh, exposing the bubbly water-damaged raw wood and patches of white paint beneath. Horrified, Deimos felt a tear run down his cheek when the exposed walls underneath began to pulse and bleed.

Deimos bolted out of the room, nearly falling on his face while he shredded down the smooth hallway floors. He purposely slammed into the first set of tall legs he could see, too disoriented from the wilting flower wallpaper and the bleeding walls of the room he had harmed to dream up any consequences.

“Hey, watch where you’re—“ The man abruptly stopped to absorb the image of Deimos's mutilated arm. He clenched his tiny wrists so hard that Deimos gasped, flinching backwards even though he had no intention of struggling, no matter what was done to him. Shaking him so hard that Deimos thought he could feel his brain bash against his skull, the man cried, “ _What the_ fuck _is wrong with you?_ ” 

The man cursed and spluttered as he roughly dragged Deimos, who had gone completely limp for him, towards the nearest grimy bathroom. He threw Deimos onto the counter and slammed his head into the mirror behind it. Deimos heard it shatter as he briefly blacked out. Forcing himself to stay alert, he hoped that the man would hurry as he tore through the cabinet high above the sink. He felt blood begin to clump in his hair and clenched his teeth together. Deimos realized that he was cradling his bruised wrist when he stared down at the smeared pattern of blood that ran all the way down his arm. All he could think about was how badly he needed to reverse the damage he had done to his haven under the bed.

A bandage fluttered down from the cabinet, straight into Deimos’s lap. He thanked no one for the miracle as he grabbed it securely in his fist and shoved it into his jacket pocket. Deimos slipped off the counter and landed hard on the ground, running as fast as his little legs could carry him. It was no surprise that the man was chasing him, but Deimos did not bother to slam the door shut when he arrived in the bedroom. Purposely averting his eyes from the naked, bleeding walls exposed where the wallpaper had curled upwards, Deimos dived under the bed and used his hands to cushion his crash against the wall.

The wall was still streaming eerie red dust from the hole Deimos had irritated. He fumbled to unwrap the bandage quickly and ripped the paper off of it before carefully placing it over the wall’s wound, gingerly patting it down.

“It’ll be alright,” he whispered hoarsely, stroking the bleeding wall with his even bloodier arm.

  


####  **No. 726**  
[YLW_23]  


* * *

The static from the television nearly drowned out the soft piano tune playing from it. There was no picture—there had never been a picture on that screen, as far as Deimos knew. Staring at the fuzzy screen made his head pulse, so Deimos sat on the floor by the wall, hugging his knees and looking towards the ground.

“Vik, tell them the one about the slaughterhouse ghost,” one of the older boys leaning against the wall by the door said. A faint smirk trailed across his face, but Deimos was not certain if he was happy or not.

“Alright, sit down guys,” Vik commanded. His nasally voice dug into Deimos’s eardrums in such a way that made him want to cringe, but he did not move. He was a distance away from the other kids, who were gradually obeying Vik by sitting down on the torn-up carpet. “You’re all gonna get beat if ya piss yourselves from this one, so man up.”

He gestured to the right, and the kids’ eyes followed his arm. “Y’know that building right next to us—the big one?”

The kids' heads bobbed up and down. Deimos observed that the corners of his lips tugged upwards, into a smile when he said, “It’s gonna fall and crush us all. We’ll all be dead.”

“No it isn’t, asshole!” one of the kids yelled, standing up to throw a punch at Vik. He was bigger, however; able to stand like a rock while he shoved the kid back in his place on the ground with little effort. The neutral expression on Deimos’s face turned solemn. He kept a more careful eye on Vik and hugged his knees closer to his chest.

“Like hell it ain’t gonna fall!” Vik snorted. “I’ll tell ya why if you’d all shut the fuck up. This is important stuff!”

The kids got quiet, even though no one particularly wanted to hear Vik’s grim tale. They didn’t have much of a choice with the other older boy standing guard at the only exit to the room, whom Deimos almost certainly recognized as Gideon, who had a reputation for violence. Deimos had put a lot of effort into avoiding Gideon. His eyes crept away from Vik and onto him, planning a hopeless dream escape route where he would crawl out of the room unnoticed. When Gideon's sharp eyes met his, Deimos snapped his focus back onto Vik.

“You runts know what a slaughterhouse is?” Vik asked, crossing his arms. When his only response was the static and music coming from the old television, he explained, “They kill stuff in there; all kinds of stuff! Whatever they can get their fucking hands on. Even kids from here. Ever wonder where the kids go who disappear from here? They get themselves killed in that place and turned into meat.”

“Yeah right,” one of the kids boldly dared to huff.

Vik glared at him, but let it slide. “ _Anyway_ , there was a kid who used to be here a long time ago. Me and Gideon remember him, but none of you runts was here before to know him.”

Deimos stared at Vik’s old brown boots, imagining the dark slaughterhouse looming over them. It would crumble its hellfire debris in menacing chunks, melting through the roof and eventually swallowing the place whole into its dark pit of a stomach, kids and all. “He was kinda weird, but never really did anything bad. Did what he was told," Vik continued. His face twisted into a crooked smile and the kids remained silent. "One day, though—kid fucking snapped! Decided he didn’t wanna listen to anyone no more and started doing whatever he wanted to do. He went where he wasn’t s’pose to go, and even managed to escape this place. Never saw him again after that, and never mentioned him again. It was like he had never existed.” 

With a smirk plastered onto his face Vik murmured, “That’s when we heard noises starting to come from the dead slaughterhouse. Real terrible sounds coming from in there that woke you up when you was sleeping and grumbled real low when it was quiet during the daytime! Wanna know why it did that?”

None of the kids answered, whether it be from feigned disinterest or legitimate fear. Deimos continued to stare at Vik’s shoes and remained completely calm; the only tension in his body winding up when he snuck peeks at the doorway Gideon guarded. It made him uncomfortable that Gideon's eyes seemed to be locked onto him, analyzing and remembering him.

“Kid got himself snatched off the streets outside of here to be murdered and turned into meat in that slaughterhouse. It’s his ghost, dumb runts! That’s where all that wretched clamoring came from.” The static from the television began to warp the sounds of the piano. “That’s when the building started to collapse into this one; when all that noise started coming from it. That fuckin’ kid was pissed as hell when he got himself killed—mad at the slaughterhouse and even more at this place.”

Vik ran a hand through his untidy black hair. “If you’re as pissed as he was when you die, you turn into a ghost—that’s how these kinda things work. That’s why that building is falling into this one. Kid’s murdered ghost is pushing it closer and closer with all of his might and rage, every single day. One day, it’ll fall and crush all of us worthless shits, and maybe we’ll turn into ghosts, too!”

Gideon burst into booming, unexpected laughter by the door, causing Deimos to jump. Vik, who had been trying to keep a straight face started laughing as well. The kids were either terrified or mad, maybe both. Some of them stood up and started barking at Vik, trying to punch him in the face while he attempted to hold them back with his strong arms. No one was dumb enough to mess with Gideon as he glided out of the room with every last drop of power.

Deimos remained on the floor hugging his knees, afraid of the fact he was now on Gideon's radar rather than the ghost in the slaughterhouse. The part of Vik’s story that sent a shock of excitement and fear through his heart was that the kid managed to get out of the place, to the unknown beyond the moldy wooden fence.


	4. Above

Nothing was left but darkness and pain. Deimos had never put much thought into the afterlife, but had never assumed it to be painful. Deep pounding in his head pulsed red into his black vision.

It was the fault of his hair, he peacefully concluded. Blackening, silencing the glow of any specks of purity left inside of him. Painlessness was reserved for more important people. No longer subtle, his whole body pulsed wildly down through the heat of his toes and ravaged his heart like a curse. Red violently smeared and flashed through the dark. 

Deimos resisted the darkness's consumption, which enabled his eyes to slowly flutter open. Everything was blurry and colorful and it made him dizzy.

Before Deimos had time to become confused by his surroundings beyond the haze, a wave of nausea cracked through him. He gagged and flipped himself to dry heave through the plethora of blurred colors. He felt heavy and sick, disturbingly mortal. 

"—carpet is kashan—kill you if—puke on—worth more—both of our—combined," Deimos heard distantly, startled when he felt someone shake his limp shoulders. The room spun, and Deimos weakly failed at trying to smack them away.

"Are you awake?" Deimos flinched at the loudness of the question, though it sounded as if it were filtered through a broken television. When his ears stopped ringing, he took a deep breath and stared down at the patterns of color swimming on his lap from the tears that had gathered in his eyes from illness. The question was repeated impatiently, but Deimos did not have to speak for the man to receive his answer, raising his eyes to stare at him through screens of fog.

Confusion, queasiness, and blurriness jolted out of him when Deimos recognized the speaker as the dark haired man. With no doubt in his mind, Deimos felt his heart slingshot across his entire body and brutally snap back into place. He released a tiny noise that he did not know he had been holding onto; and the reality of the situation was confirmed when the dark haired man's warm, strong hand clamped over his mouth so hard that he felt bones through his skin grinding against his teeth. "Are you fucking insane? _Zatknis!_ " the dark haired man hissed, quiet enough for his voice not to quiver. 

Nothing more had to be said to keep Deimos quiet. He untangled himself from an array of colorful blankets and looked around the room, feeling the tight squeeze of his dead heart. Deimos’s vision was clear enough for him to realize that he was inside the mansion; he stopped breathing and craned his neck to look outside of the window across from the bed he was sitting in. The black fence was there, the gardens were there, both looking small and surreal.

Wetness dripped onto Deimos's hand, startling him out of his deep state of thought. He hadn’t realized he was crying. Shocked, he wiped his tears away, bringing his shameful attention to the dark-haired man again to see if he had noticed. The man had a sour expression on his face and was clearly uncomfortable, staring at noting in particular with gritted teeth and avoiding looking at Deimos.

“Still gonna hurl?” he asked tactlessly to break the awkwardness after Deimos had wiped his eyes.

Deimos shook his head, though he wasn't sure. The dark haired man didn't look too sure, either. He stood and put a hand on his shoulder, Deimos stunned at how real it felt as he looked into his eyes. "Don't move."

Feeling his cheeks flash with heat, Deimos nodded and watched the dark haired man leave the room. He stealthily closed the door behind him, and Deimos absently obeyed his command. Absorbing the fact that he was dead was somehow less exhilarating than the fact that the mansion was his afterlife—he was above the black fence.

The door creaked open, and the dark haired man returned holding a glass of spotless water in his hand while he carefully closed the door with his other. He marched over to Deimos and cupped both of his hands around the glass to not endanger the priceless decor of the guest room. Deimos stared down at the clear water distrustfully before sipping it. 

“Sorry about your clothes." Deimos looked down and noticed that he was wearing clothes that he had never seen before; the color of his shirt hurting his eyes. Sourly, the dark haired man continued, "They were so torn up and bloody by the time we dragged you in here. And no offense, but they were fucking gross—we're trying to be discrete about this, but Abel's parents woulda smelled you from miles away."

His disgusted eyes locked onto Deimos’s. "By the way, you still reek. I'm hosing you down once we're both a thousand times certain you're not going to ruin the carpet."

They sat in silence for a while, Deimos noticing the overwhelming scent of lavender that burned through his lungs. He forced himself not to cough and took another sip of water. Robotically, he whispered, "The fence."

"Huh? Oh fuck! Yeah, you were nearly impaled on that old thing. We figured you weren't gonna sue us, because, uh. Well…” Cain glanced away. “What's your name anyway? You got a name?" Unable to wait through the silence that followed, he said, "I'm Cain."

“Cain,” Deimos repeated softly, engraving the dark haired man’s face to his name. “I’m Deimos."

Eyes on the door, Cain shifted before he crossed his arms and said, "Well _Deimos,_ I'm not gonna risk scrubbing all the grime off of you until later so I'm not fully liable if I get seen with you, so we're gonna have to wait in here for a while."

A nod from Deimos. He didn't mind. Cain seemed to be getting antsy, doing all he could to cover any gaps of silence. "How the hell did you end up like that anyway? By the fence, I mean."

Deimos pulled his lips together in concentration. The gap between when he died and opened his eyes felt like a single instant. Unsure of whether or not time had passed or if he had merely forgotten, Deimos shrugged off the question. Frowning, he posed his own question. "Do you remember purgatory?"

"What?" Cain asked, taken aback.

"Purgatory," Deimos repeated hoarsely, shyly looking Cain in the eyes while aggressively fidgeting with the baggy shirt Cain had put on him. Looking away, he added, "When you died."

"What in the _ever-loving fuck_ are you talking about?" 

Deimos felt his face grow red and stayed silent.

After a deep sigh, Cain asked, "How the fuck would I know about that?"

Deimos didn't respond, angry that this was Cain’s first impression of him. It made him wonder if he was somehow entirely wrong about everything. He stared at the mesmerizing colors of the bedclothes, more confused than ever and daring to whisper, "Well... we're both dead, and..."

“—Dead? The fuck are you talking about—you _woulda_ been dead if I hadn't seen you bleeding out on the street.”

Miserable, Deimos was unable to convince himself otherwise because he was inside the mansion. There was no way he could have gotten there if he were alive. He bleakly changed the subject, voice beginning to fail him. “How is someone like you in a place like this?”

Pursing his lips and staring Deimos down with suspicious eyes, he growled, "Well, no one's happy about it, that's for sure—look, I’m gonna go find Abel before someone else finds us. They'll think we're conspiring or some shit, the two of us together."

Cain rose, not waiting for a response. Deimos watched him close the door behind him before lightly dipping a freshly-socked foot onto the carpet Cain had thrown a fit about, feeling like a landing angel when he sunk slightly in it's fuzzy godliness. He tip-toed over to the window, careful not to touch anything in the colorful room; especially the smudge-able cold glass of the window overlooking the gardens and then fence.

The black fence below looked like a plastic toy to be stepped on and crushed, and the snowy garden's sharp contrast of the gray on the other side of the fence was spectacular. He was on one of the highest floors of the mansion, and could see a great distance through the snow. Deimos squeezed his eyes shut and reopened them several times to make sure he wasn't dreaming.

He heard the door creak open and turned around, feeling a strange sensation of terror immediately replaced with calm when he recognized the intruder as one of the less intimidating blonde-haired residents of the mansion, followed by Cain. It was unnerving to see someone like him so close. He smiled, pretty, and said, "Oh. Thank god you're okay."

Cain slid into the room from behind him, clenching his teeth and asking, "You didn't touch anything, did you?"

Deimos shook his head, eyes fixated on the blonde.

"Good. You're filthy," Cain reminded him. He gestured towards the blonde and introduced, "This is Abel. Abel, Deimos."

Abel smiled, not even twitching into the motion of a handshake. Nervous, Cain pressed quietly, "We need to clean him up before his stench alerts the whole goddamn city."

“Cain,” Abel hissed. He gave Deimos a sympathetic frown that made him feel uneasy. "I'm sorry about Cain. Are you well enough to bathe?”

Perplexed by the smoothness of Abel's voice, Deimos silently made his way towards him. All three stared nervously out of the crack of the door down the hallway, unsure of how to usher the dark-haired fugitive to the guest hall bathroom unnoticed. It didn't take long for Abel to say, "You go first, Cain."

"Why me?"

"Just... please?"

Cain huffed murderously and muttered under his breath while he strode confidently down the hall, less confident when he peered down the overlook. A nervous hand to his mouth, Abel stayed behind with Deimos and waited for Cain to arrive near the bathroom door safely. Cain mouthed something that Deimos read as "get the fuck over here _right now_ ". So Abel whispered, "Come on," and scurried into the hallway, peering frantically behind him to see if Deimos was following.

Staring deep into the gold-embroidered crimson carpets of the hallway, Deimos padded towards the two, quickly and undetectable. When Deimos slipped into the bathroom and Abel closed the door, the three let out a collective breathe. Cain broke the silence with a small laugh. "Just like a mouse, Deimos."


	5. Under

Pristine white bathtub, beautiful faux wood peeking above the blue walls, every surface packed with unidentified cleaning supplies—Deimos had never seen anything like it before. He had only just arrived in the guest room bathroom, but his lungs were already overwhelmed by the burning scent of chemicals. 

Abel’s hand reached to turn on the water, but shot away as if the metal were on fire. “Cain, I’m not sure this is a good idea."

"You say this after we dragged him unconscious into your basement, dragged his dead weight up all of the goddamn stairs, and then treating his wounds; all while waiting for your parents to execute me out in the yard, princess. Nothing about any of this was a good idea.”

Lowering his head, Deimos tried to focus on the foreign beauty of the room. "Ah... Deimos, he didn't mean it like that," he was surprised to hear Abel say. He lifted his eyes to look at Abel, then Cain.

"I didn't say I regretted anything. It’s just a mess," Cain bitterly clarified. The faucet squeaked on and the stream of water might as well have been a deafening helicopter from the way Abel cringed.

"Might wanna take your clothes off, Deimos,” Cain urged. “The sooner we can get the hell out of here and stop making a racket, the better."

Careful not to wrinkle or further contaminate the clothes he had been put in, Deimos awkwardly stripped down to nothing. Abel's piercing, blue-eyed stare made him hurry faster than Cain’s words, but nothing stopped him from feeling less than a dog when he latched onto the stray garments with tight fists to avoid shivering.

The tub expanded into masses of bubbles after Cain had squirted a few drops of _something_ into the clear water. Upon shuffling closer to the bathtub, Deimos froze to look at his uncomfortable reflection staring back at him in thousands of tiny bubbles.

“You allergic to soap or something?" Cain hissed from behind him. A jab in the spine forced Deimos to miserably splash into the water. The mass of bubbles absorbed his entire body, making him feel safe. He craned his neck to avoid getting soap in his mouth and peered nervously at Cain, who was watching the door with a manic expression on his face; and Abel, who was biting his nails. 

Cain snapped his attention back to Deimos by throwing a heavy-duty sponge at his face. "Goddammit Deimos, hurry," he pleaded. Deimos absently began to scrub his arms in obedience, sacrificing the masses of bubble rainbows to rid himself of filth. He stared at Abel the entire time.

The three were quiet enough to hear the distant sound of a closing door over Deimos's tiny splashes. The wind howled before the door suctioned shut, causing them to collectively freeze in terror. Abel was the first to leap into action, wordlessly sliding out of the room and closing the door behind him.

Confused, Deimos slowed his scrubs. Cain fell to his knees beside the tub, grabbed another sponge and said, “We've gotta hurry."

The sponge created a hole in the bubble tower, exposing the water underneath. Deimos pinched his eyes shut when Cain brutally squeezed the water out over his head, scrubbing Deimos down like he would a car. 

The sponge made Deimos’s skin burn. He curled away from Cain when he began to buff his chest, causing water to splash into his face. When Cain got to his head, Deimos yelped and flinched away so hard that he crashed into the wall. Petrified, Cain and Deimos listened over the idle splashing to the tub with hypersensitive ears, Deimos’s hand clamped over his mouth while tears grew in his eyes.

Several excruciating minutes later, when the water had nearly settled again, Cain dared to breathe, “Fucking hell.” Afraid to touch Deimos again, he whispered, “Your head still hurt?”

Deimos nodded stiffly, trying to keep as still as possible. Cain shifted to inspect Deimos’s head, not knowing what to look for and not ready to risk touching him again. Frowning, he said, “Your skull might be cracked or something. We’ll wait for Abel to come back. Maybe he knows about these kinds of things.”

Silence followed as Deimos leveled out his breathing and took the sponge again. Cain didn’t pester him to hurry. Rather, he bit his lip and stared at the door again. “Sorry. Sorry, Deimos,” he eventually said; flush making Deimos wonder if he had ever apologized to anyone in his entire life. “If anyone besides Abel heard that, I’m throwing you out of the fucking window and onto the roof.”

The breathless laugh Cain gave made the idea sound less outlandish. “I wish things could have been different.”

The silence allowed Deimos to listen closely to his near-silent breathing, broken by a whisper. “Am I dead?”

“ _No._ No. Quit saying that.” Before Deimos could object, he noticed how antsy Cain was becoming. Tentatively he started, “Look—“

The door burst opened, and Deimos and Cains’ hearts collectively stopped. Instinct caused Deimos to push as far backwards against the wall as he could. A messy and traumatized Abel slipped into the room and closed the door softly behind him, chest rising and falling like a rabbit.

As quietly as his voice let him, Cain roared, “Fucking—Abel! Never do that again!”

“Sorry,” he panted, unable to fully catch his breath before saying, “The guest—is supposed to be here—in a couple of minutes.”

Cain’s eyes widened. “What? But—”

Abel painfully closed his eyes and nodded, watching Deimos sunk further into his protective layer of bubbles. “My parents told me that I looked disgraceful and needed to freshen up—oh god Cain, what do we do?”

“Don’t panic. Don’t fucking panic,” Cain growled, standing to flatten Abel’s hair but messing it up further. “They want me there, too?”

“Um. I don’t think so.”

“Right.”

Abel’s eyes darted to Deimos. “What if they do? What are we supposed to do?”

“How much can you stretch it before they come up here looking for you?”

He looked nervously down at his golden watch. “A few minutes after he arrives, at best. They are very intent on me meeting—”

“I think Deimos’s skull is cracked.”

“What?” Abel exclaimed, face twisting in horror. He scrambled over to Deimos, who shied away from him. “Can I see?”

Deimos gave him a grave look, but did not so much as twitch when Abel’s gentle hands combed his skull. After a moment, he froze and snapped his hand away from Deimos like he had been bitten.

“What is it?” Cain interjected.

“That,” Abel murmured, showing Cain a dark purple strand coloring the back of Deimos’s head. 

Before anything else could be done, the airtight slam of the front door rattled through the mansion. “Go, princess. I’ll handle it,” Cain droned, but Abel was already out of the room, leaving Cain to wonder what to do about less-filthy Deimos and his broken head.


End file.
